Successful Blog

Beach Notes: Catch the Wind

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by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

Photo of outriggers, Coolangatta Beach, Queensland, Australia, by Des Walsh

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One Sunday afternoon, walking on nearby Kirra Beach, we came across a group of kitesurfers, or kiteboarders. It was a blustery day, with the wind whipping up the waves. It was fascinating to see how, to get the kites in the air their owners had to exert a huge amount of energy and strength. Then once the kite was up the wind gave it dramatic power. The board rider’s task then was basically to manage and steer, but it seemed the kite and the wind were in control of the speed and direction.

Business analogy? Starting a business we have to expend a lot of time and energy. Our goal will be to get our business to a point where it can “catch the wind” of the market, with us then having to steer and manage, but ideally without all the huge effort we expended to get started.

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh

Thanks to Week 238 SOBs

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Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

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Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

SOB Business Cafe 05-14-10

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Sticky Figure
Now, there are lots of ways to find suppliers. You can Google, make phone calls, field incoming sales calls, sit through capabilities presentations, go through an RFP process, vet vendors, pick one and hope it works….you know the drill. Inefficient, time-intensive, risky.

Life as a Literary Agent
Too often, people sit down and nervously launch into some kind of story and I find myself dizzy with confusion. I sit there like a deer in the headlights and then I say something like, “Let’s back up. What’s your name? And is this fiction or nonfiction?”

Steve Farber
So, imagine my surprise (really, really great surprise) when I started to hear from educators–teachers, principals, administrators–about how they’d been applying the principles of Extreme Leadership in their buildings, in their schools, their classrooms. I’ve written about several of these amazing educators on this blog.

OPEN Small Business
While social media cheat-sheets and short cuts are available almost everywhere you look, the truth is that we have some work ahead of us. To help, I’ve assembled a list of five best practices to help you build, cultivate, and measure success in the new web right now.

Blue Sky Factory
If I could give you one piece of advice to make your email marketing efforts optimized, it would be to make sure you are fulfilling these 3 integral factors for email deliverability:

Media Post: Research Brief
Traditionally, PR has focused on reputation, earned media, third-party validation, and awareness-building – while marketing has been generally focused on advertising, sponsorships and lead-generation. The conversation has centered on how these two disciplines should be orchestrated to increase the overall effectiveness of outreach.

Social media contains elements that both disciplines find appealing and complementary to their existing efforts, so the debate has shifted towards who should “own” social media and, more importantly, how best to integrate social media with broader marketing or communications channels.

Related ala carte selections include

Digital Dads
Now, don’t get me wrong. I am the farthest thing from an uptight prude. But, as I sat there in the audience and watched the 6 & 7 year old teams shake things they didn’t have and perform moves that were more appropriate for a stripper pole then a school stage I had to stop and wonder. Why are we letting our kids do this?

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like. No tips required. Comments appreciated.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

I’m a proud affiliate of

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Cool Tool Review: Dabbleboard

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Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Small Business

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Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in a small business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks who would be their customers in a form that’s consistent and relevant.

Cool Tool Review: Dabbleboard
A Review by Todd Hoskins

The dreaded dial in . . .

I had a colleague who referred to virtual meetings as “pajama business.” It is only within the last few years that we have gained the luxury of clipping toenails during a CEO update, or making egg salad during a development team scrum. The gain in freedom has often been offset by a loss in engagement. When I can’t see your smirk, or feel your trepidation, or witness your enthusiasm, I am less connected to you, my client or co-worker.

A few weeks ago I reviewed Prezi, my favorite tool for visualizing a presentation. There are plenty of collaboration tools out there for bridging the visual divide in virtual meetings, from screen sharing to video conferencing. This week I want to highlight a simple digital whiteboard called Dabbleboard that can encourage participation, and aide the visual learners and thinkers among us (like me).

The visual component of any meeting is important. Dan Roam received considerable attention a couple years ago for solving problems and selling ideas in pictures in his book The Back of the Napkin. Dabbleboard provides the necessary functionality to place a blackboard or napkin in front of anyone with whom you want to share.

For a sales pitch, a site redesign, a strategy meeting, even reviewing financials – all of these situations improve with pictures and shapes. A different part of our brain gets activated and you’ll keep the attention of your people or prospects.

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I have also tried Scriblink, which worked fairly well. Both tools offer chat, real-time sharing, and phone conferencing. I like Dabbleboard’s personal image library – you can reuse graphics you’ve made. I also like their commitment to their users, evidenced in their blog and the creation of a toolkit.

A Pro (paid) version is available that includes customization, permissions, data portability, and security. If you’re going to create highly confidential drawings, you may want to pay the monthly fee. Discounts are also available for not-for-profits and educators.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 3/5 – Adobe and Microsoft lack the whimsy of Dabbleboard

Entrepreneur Value: 4/5 – excellent, though the UI could be better. AlmostMeet in beta (Please, please change the name).

Personal Value: 2/5 – great for school projects

4 Headline Types that Grab Attention Immediately

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By Terez Howard

How to blog series
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One Blogging Secret That Everyone’s Telling You

I have something to tell you. You’ve heard it before. You know it’s beneficial to every blog. The great bloggers write about this regularly and practice what they preach.

Attention-grabbing headlines. There, I said it. Secret’s out. or it’s been out for years.

4 Headline Types that Grab Attention Immediately

When I worked for the newspaper, my editor told us that our headlines had to tell our readers something. Sounds simple enough, right? It is pretty straightforward.

I wrote the following story back in 2005: “Katrina victims in Chester tell their story of survival.” I could have written “Hurricane story.” My now five-year-old headline told readers what to expect from my story and why they would want to read it. My second, obviously bland headline example doesn’t tell you anything. It sounds like a fictional piece on a hurricane’s journey through an area.

Your headline needs a voice. While it doesn’t have to be a summary of your entire blog post, it should give your readers a taste of what to expect.

What kinds of headlines should you write? Here are four:

Raise a question

You can specifically ask a question, but your headline does not have to be a question. Rather, readers will ask themselves a question and want to know the answer.

For instance, my headline for today: “One Blogging Secret That Everyone’s Telling You.” What secret? Why’s it a secret if everyone’s telling me? Who’s telling me? These are the questions my headline raises, and I provide the answers in my blog.

So when you write a headline that raises a question, be sure to provide a satisfactory, thorough answer to your audience.

Include a list

“101 Blogging Topics That Will Keep Readers Coming Back In Hundreds”

Once again, readers know what to expect, that when they click on your post, they will see a numbered list, from 1 to 101. Why do lists make wonderful headlines? Bloggers will tell you how the search engines love numbers and how numbers are memorable to readers. These points are true, but not my focus.

From a blogger’s standpoint, lists are easy to write. As a writer, a list organizes my thoughts for me from 1 to whatever. From a reader’s standpoint, lists are easy to read. You expect a comprehensive, systematic piece of information.

Make a how to

People love a good how to. I love how-to’s. I followed a how to count calories and lose weight story and shed 10 pounds.

Tell your readers exactly what they will be able to do if they follow your how to. A how to headline does not have to be so basic, though. It could be a “How to not…” or a how to do something metaphorically, like “How to pop eyes with your headlines.”

Be compelling – Make it urgent

What makes you want to click on a blog post? It piques your interest. With the three aforementioned types of headlines, each and every one should be compelling. It kills me that bloggers spend their time writing a well-researched, thoroughly engaging post and don’t give any time to the headline. It’s an afterthought.

That doesn’t mean you can’t write your headline last. That’s a fine idea and preferable to many bloggers. I tend to write my headline first and tweak it as I write make it fit the entire post. Do what works for you, just so you give time to your headline.

Your headline is your appetizer. It prepares your audience’s appetite to the main course. Does your headline induce hunger? Hey, sounds like a headline!

What do you do to write an attention-grabbing headline?

 

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Author’s Bio:
Terez Howard operates TheWriteBloggers, a professional blogging service which builds clients’ authority status and net visibility. She regularly blogs at Freelance Writing Mamas. You’ll find her on Twitter @thewriteblogger

 

Thanks, Terez!
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Social Media Book List: Book Outlook on Seth Godin

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A Weekly Series by Teresa Morrow

I’m Teresa Morrow, Founder of Key Business Partners, LLC and I work with authors and writers to manage their online promotion efforts. As part of my job I read a lot of books (and I love to read anyway!).
I decided to change things up a little this week and do a book “outlook” on two of Seth Godin’s books: ‘Linchpin’ (his latest) and ‘Meatball Sundae’ from 2007.

Lately the buzz around Seth Godin has been surrounding his latest book ‘Linchin’. As you can see here is an example: one where he was Skyped in to a university classroom to talk about the elements of this book. In the video, the highlight I caught was how Seth was talking about people wanting to be around you (or tweet with you, or befriend you on Facebook) because of “how you make them feel”.

That is one thing I have always admired about Seth, is his ability to make people stop and think. And most of the time the concept is very simple. Because most of the time he is right on point.

Think for just a moment, why do you listen to certain music? Because of the words and the voice of the person singing, right? Why do you read certain books? Because of the emotions the words on the page touch your heart, right?

Well, that is what Seth is talking about here—-you can become a “want” to other people because they can’t (or don’t) wish to be without you and your services.

And while ‘Linchin’ has been all the buzz lately, I have picked up one of Seth’s earlier works, ‘Meatball Sundae’, to take a look and share some ideas I found interesting in this book about marketing and how it has changed over the last decade. Because the subtitle to this book is “Is your Marketing Out of Sync?

Meatball Sundae

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Here are few concepts I would like to explore with you:

The first concept I would like to discuss is the difference between “old marketing” and “new marketing” and driving innovation deep. On pages 22-23 Seth talks about how some companies found “new” ways to market their products and did so successfully.

Did you know that Cafepress.com (they sell promotional products) sell millions of dollars of imprinted items each month? I figured they were doing pretty good, but I didn’t realize they were that popular. They took a concept (personal promotional products) and found a way to do it on a bigger scale by allowing the individual person customize their promotional products. Then they took it one step further and allowed people to set their prices for their own products. And to top that, it is all done over the web and the person doesn’t have to have inventory. What a great concept, right?

Also, did you know Audible.com carries more books on tape than any store or library….all on the web without needing to set up a physical location.

My point here is (well, really Seth’s point is) the way you are able to set up your business and get it to other people has changed drastically and you can thrive with it.

Next concept is realizing how the technology has changed the environment but human nature hasn’t. Seth offers this—(page 48)
“Marketing has always been about discovering what people want and need and telling the story about how they can get it (from you). It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that the list represents a change in what people want and need. Human nature hasn’t changed a bit. What has changed is the environment we live in. The combination of technology and competition has lead to a world where many people can get what they want, when they need it…what we’ve wanted all along is to be treated with respect and to be connect to other people.”

Again, he made me stop and think. Because when I first read this I thought, “No, Seth human nature has changed!” But we have just adjusted as a result of the environment around us.

Another concept he talks about his offering your clients a way to receive what they want (from you) in a way that allows you not to break the bank either. One example he used was Lulu.com. You can work with Lulu to get your manuscript turned into a book. They will offer you a online storefront to sell it from and will give you an ISBN to allow you to sell your book from any bookstore in the word. Of course, now their are more than just Lulu.com to do this, however, the concept is the same.

There are many more great concepts in this book and you can pick up a copy for yourself at Amazon and from his website.

You have more possibilities and opportunities for marketing and to get out to those who will want and need your services and products more than you have before. And it is your ability to find your own UNIQUE way to be authentic that will get you connect with those who will want to network, buy and share with others about you.

I hope you have enjoyed this “outlook” on Seth Godin and two of his books.

How do you keep you marketing in sync with the ever changing technology?

I truly hope you will check out these books and please comment and let me know your thoughts on them.